Low End Mac has a great article on the the history of Pixar, as it starts (sort of) at Xerox PARC and ends up being sold for $7.4B in stock to Disney. Which leads me to ask: What didn’t start at PARC? I think they, yes Xerox, should be given a Nobel Prize. Anyway, I digress. The part that interested me the most is how negative and tumultous the relationship between Disney and Pixar was and how little Steve Jobs cared about the company. In fact, he didn’t get excited until the release of Toy Story, at which point he was excitedly accepting all the praise his team had done. He became a billionaire because of Pixar but to him, it was just a side project, focusing on NeXT.

On opening weekend, Toy Story earned $39.1 million, enough to recoup the production costs. By the end of its theatrical release, the film netted over $200 million in box office receipts, an incredible number for an animated feature.